"Digital conversations are a fertile ground for deception because people can easily conceal their identity and their messages often appear credible," Meservy said in the statement.

For this new study, 100 university students carried out online conversations with a computer. The computers asked the students 30 questions, and the students were instructed to lie in about half of their answers.

They found that the students spent 10 percent longer writing messages with lies, and they spent more time editing those messages.

Does this mean that every time your friends take an hour to respond, they're crafting a devious plot to deceive you? No, the researchers cautioned the study only reveals a more general pattern across a group of people.

The study will be published online this week in the journal ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems.